"Shifty is Curtis at his most atmospheric, even surrealist. Getting lost in his late-capitalist video collages can feel like a shot to the heart, which is one way of saying his work often resembles the wild detours of Guy Debord and his Dada forebears. While the occasional titles describe what is happening, they feel more like bookends than breadcrumbs.
(...)
His new five-part documentary is a kind of fairy-tale fever dream of capitalist realism, whose broad contours will be familiar to readers of Mark Fisher and Jacobin. The story begins with the earthquake of Thatcherism. We watch as the Iron Lady attempts to conjure national cohesion from a make-believe version of Britain’s imperial past, even as she elevates self-interest and private ambition to the level of civic virtue. What follows is a slow-motion fragmentation: scandals metastasize into generalized social paranoia, sensationalist media narratives erode institutional trust, and liberal elites, feeling betrayed by the newly Tory-voting working classes, retreat into the cultural capital of biennales, book prizes, and conceptual art. Industrial infrastructure is sold off for pennies on the pound as the government hands the reins of interest rates to unelected bankers. Unemployment, skinheads, check-cashing stores, and Netto discount supermarkets sprout like wild thyme across the English heather. Politicians end up believing the worst about themselves and begin abdicating responsibility. A cash-strapped Gordon Brown attempts early versions of public-private partnerships, indebting the government to private finance for the very services it had only just recently provided. In the background are the twin engines of finance and technology: unaccountable, placeless, and entirely prepared to occupy the vacuum left by political withdrawal."
